“Yeah, they do. And thank you, that’s what I needed to hear.” She grabbed her purse, pushed away from her desk in her at-home office, and turned to face her friend at last. It was the first time she’d made eye contact with her since Violet had walked into the apartment.
“I’d take the pain away if I could,” Vi told her.
“I know you would.” But healing magic wasn’t something you could learn like warlock magic. It took a natural-born healer to take away someone’s suffering. It made Violet feel very helpless at times.
She changed the subject. “You know, you really should lock your door when you’re home alone. I walked right in.”
Violet often worried about Poppy in the mortal realm. It had such a violent undercurrent to it – and this was coming from an unseelie fae. It seemed to be built on a platform of seething resentment and greed that was ceaselessly fed by fear and distrust. Though attractiveness wasn’t a necessary ingredient of trouble, Violet knew it often helped it along, and Poppy was downright beautiful. She was a “mutt” genetically, who claimed her blue eyes and height were from Norway, her winsome and strong blood was Scottish, and her inability to burn in the sun was from Brazil. Oh – and her love of hockey came from Canada.
She’d been born in Ontario, and raised there until she was five, when a her family moved to the US. She’d been in Seattle ever since.
“The door is warded,” Poppy said. “It’s only going to let in people I like.” She smiled, insinuating that Violet was obviously one of those people. “You feel like coffee?” she asked rather desperately, and her smile faded at once.
There was rarely a time when Violet didn’t feel like having coffee, which not only gave her energy, but had a mild opiate-like effect upon the unseelie fae. And she was betting that Poppy, who was suffering from that migraine, felt like having it even more. Any migraineur knew the benefits of caffeine during a ringer of a headache.
“Yes,” Vi replied. “I’ll buy.” She stood. “But let me shield us first.” She wasn’t supposed to cast magic in the mortal realm. It was rather forbidden, in the way that breaking the speed limit was forbidden for mortals. It was usually not caught or even perceived by the fae elders, but on the off chance that it was, it could turn a good day bad in a flash. Still, a simple weather shielding spell behind closed doors would go unnoticed, and her friend was in dire straits.
She cast the spell, which would surround them wherever they went throughout the day, negating the effects of the heat wave they were experiencing. Poppy smiled gratefully, though it was tight around its edges due to pain.
They left the apartment and headed down the block, and as they walked, Violet fingered the ring on her right middle finger. It allowed her to move freely in the mortal realm, which was replete with cold metal: Iron.
Iron was caustic to the fae. She, herself, had always been particularly sensitive to it. She could even feel it in the dirt sometimes. If she was visiting an area on Earth where the ground was red, then despite the ring on her finger, she felt an almost sickening heat and vibration rise up through her legs. She touched the ring now, just out of habit and a need for security, like Linus and his blanket.
“If it makes you feel any better, it’s supposed to cool off again tomorrow afternoon,” she told her friend. Poppy hated heat, and the heat wave was odd for September, especially in Seattle. But it would be short lived.
“It does, actually. Thank you.”
A few blocks from Poppy’s apartment, they passed a huge cluster of signs glued onto the brick wall of an old cannery. The signs declared that PAX Prime, the number one video game convention in the nation, was soon coming to Seattle. Various games and their creators were featured on the posters, but most prominent of all were the notices reminding the gaming public that the next release in the video game sensation, Black Eyed Kids, was about to hit online retail shelves, and that Shadenigma, the games’ creator, would be signing advanced copies at PAX.
Violet stopped and stared up at the posters. She wasn’t sure she’d readily admit it to many people, but she was actually a fan of the BEK games for the Nintendo 3DS. She’d played every one of the releases so far, and happily, if barely, made it to every final level, though level fifteen of game four had given her some trouble. Fae were naturally dexterous beings, quick and agile, and that ability to literally react quickly was essential for most video games. Maybe it was cheating. Not that it mattered with a pastime.
But something struck her just then as she stared up at the latest release announcements. All of a sudden, something felt too familiar about the games. There was no other way to describe it than that.
And it was also pretty freaky how quickly they were being released. “You know… this Shadenigma guy is turning these games out so fast,” she said, pronouncing Shadenigma as it was supposed to be pronounced, Shade-nigma, “I can’t help but wonder if he’s purely human.”
“I know, right?” Poppy agreed. “It’s been six months since their inception, and this is already game five. Who moves that fast? My niece was hooked on Five Nights at Freddy’s until this came along. Now FNAF is apparently yesterday’s news in her circles.”
Violet had sort of meant the non-human comment as a joke, but now… eyeing the poster of the BEK video game series creator who mysteriously went by no other name than the chat name Shadenigma, she actually did find herself wondering. Her gaze narrowed on him. She leaned in.
The space around her seemed to thicken, and sound drifted away. The man in the image was little more than a well-built outline in a black hoodie, his face completely hidden but for a bit of strong chin with a hint of stubble. Eyes of an indeterminate color reflected from the darkness in a most unnatural way. She couldn’t even really see them, and yet they seemed to be looking right at her.
She blinked. Sound returned, and the air thinned out again.
Humans could do that eye effect with Photoshop. Couldn’t they? Violet stepped back. “Let’s get to Starbucks.”
Chapter Two
The coffee shop they’d chosen was on the corner of Pike and Melrose, and was probably the largest Starbucks in the country. It was the newly opened Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, a massive bi-level structure decorated in steampunk piping where you could watch the coffee beans being over-roasted and pay exorbitant prices for a muffin. The bathrooms were co-ed, which Violet and Poppy both had mixed feelings about, and the Wi-Fi was excellent. The seating was a bit sparse given the size of the venue, probably because much of it was relegated to a pricey boutique-styled mini-store where tourists could purchase all manner of coffee-related items, from the beans themselves to leather cup cozies to artisan mugs made solely for the store and using only cruelty-free sand. Or something like that.
All in all, however, the atmosphere was warm and inviting, if you could find a place to settle in, and was especially so if you were lucky enough to grab a cushion or two next to one of the fire places. This time of day, around 8 a.m., the store was more or less deserted. The larger crowds shuffled in during the early afternoon, and hit a peak around 3 p.m. Coffee drinkers were late risers. Which was why they so often needed coffee.
“So, Pi tells me you’ve begun packing your bag for your trek into the Dark,” said Poppy. The fireplace crackled merrily beside them. It was a high-end model that afforded no heat when the owners didn’t want it to, which was fortunate with the heat wave they were experiencing. Instead, the air conditioners overhead hummed at the same time, and the fireplaces burned for ambience alone.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t come with me,” Violet told her. “Remember what Lalura said.”
Poppy shrugged. “I know what she said. I’m not deaf. But I am your best friend, and frankly, I wouldn’t be much of one if I let you venture into the Dark alone. What have you learned in all your research?” She stared at Violet over the steaming lip of her paper coffee cup.
Violet looked around the shop, debating how much to tell her friend. Universi
ty classes would begin in a week, Fall was settling in, and the few people in the coffee shop were students back in town from summer breaks. At last, she said, “Well, you already know what shadows are.”
“Not to be confused with shades.”
“Right,” Vi nodded, taking a quick sip of her own coffee. “Shades live in the Twixt between the Seelie and Unseelie Realms, and they’re bad news. Shadows, on the other hand, are just that – the shadows of mortals. And they live in the Shadow Realm.”
“You mean when they’re not busy living in our realm.”
“Right,” Vi said again. “During the day, or when a mortal is awake, the shadow is attached to them in a kind of symbiotic relationship. But when the mortal’s asleep, the shadow leaves to live its other life in the Shadow Realm.”
Poppy looked down at the floor, and Violet knew she was checking out the blotch of darkness attached to the soles of her shoes. “I wonder how wild my shadow is at night.” Then she looked up and cocked her head to one side. “What do you suppose it is exactly that shadows do when they’re ‘living’ in the Shadow Realm?”
“According to the things I’ve read, they actually build lives for themselves. I mean, they have houses, neighborhoods, towns, cities, businesses. In the Shadow Realm, they have substance, like you and me.”
“So they just look like people.”
Vi nodded.
“So my shadow could be married with little shadow babies and be the president of the shadow PTA.”
Violet smiled. “Your shadow is more likely in shadow jail.”
Poppy laughed and sipped her coffee. Vi continued with her explanation. “Anyway, they live these lives… until and unless they mistakenly venture out of the Shadow Realm.” Some shadows decided to wander, and when they did, they reverted to their shadowy selves, beings of pure darkness with neither dimension nor characteristic.
Some of these wayward shadows wound up in the Dark. And there, they got lost. And when they got lost, they changed.
“Some wind up in the Dark,” Violet said, voicing her thoughts. “And the Dark is like a terrible labyrinth to them. They can’t find their way back out again.”
“So they can’t reunite with their mortal before the mortal wakes up?”
Violet nodded. “When that happens, it’s like a domino effect of badness. First, the mortal can’t exist without some kind of shadow, so a new one forms. But the second one isn’t anything like the first. It’s dead and dull, and lifeless, and it doesn’t support the mortal the way its original shadow did.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
Violet considered how to explain it. “Well, like I said, the relationship between a person and her shadow is symbiotic. The shadow gives her dimension and mental stability. In turn, the mortal gives the shadow experience and knowledge. The shadow learns everything its mortal does, tastes everything, hears everything, sees everything, and so forth. Without the mortal body to give them life experiences, they have nothing.”
“So what happens when the shadow doesn’t come back in time?”
“A new shadow forms, but it’s called a Sliver because that’s just what it is – a sliver of darkness that isn’t alive the way the shadow was. It’s just there to fill the gap.”
“What happens to the mortal?” Poppy asked. Her color had paled a bit, no doubt because she probably already had a good idea of what a mortal without its shadow would be like. She was intuitive that way.
“The mortal loses its dimension. Many mortals without their shadows become ill, their immune systems falter, they can become depressed, and sometimes they just… die. Those people without their original shadows are technically referred to as Sinumbras. But no one uses that term any more. Now they’re just called the Abandoned.”
There was a pause of silence while Poppy digested this. They drank a bit, and finally Poppy asked, “What happens to the lost shadow?”
“It depends. If they’re unlucky, they get lost in the Dark, fail to reunite with their mortal, and become Pan Shadows – shadows that search endlessly throughout time for some mortal that will make them feel as complete as their own mortal once did. Pan Shadows are tragic spirits, and desperate.”
Poppy was clearly troubled by this. She went a while before drinking any more of her coffee. “And… if they’re lucky?”
“Well, if they’re really lucky, the Nimbus finds them before their mortal forms a sliver and returns them to their mortal in time to reunite. And all is well.”
“What is a Nimbus?”
“The Nimbus is a group of hunters from the Shadow Realm. They go out every single night and hunt down lost shadows in the hopes of reuniting them with their mortals on time. The strongest among them even venture into the Dark to do so.”
Poppy’s eyes grew shiny. “So these guys are pretty bad ass, huh?”
Violet smiled. “They are, actually. One of the books I read that mentioned them even had a picture in it. Their leader is a mystery. No one knows who he is. He’s always either wearing a black hooded cloak or he’s transformed into some kind of shadowy beast.” She felt her heart rate quicken as she imagined a handful of dark riders outlined by the moon, their leader a handsome stranger swathed in shadow. There was little she loved more than a good guy who was disguised as a “bad guy.”
“You know,” Poppy said with a grin, “your eyes are glazing over with lust.”
“No, my eyes are glazing over because I’m high on caffeine.”
Poppy laughed, and Violet ordered another cup.
Chapter Three
The Seattle night smelled a little like mold and a lot like approaching cold. The heat wave was officially over, and the temps had dropped a full twenty degrees in the course of a few hours.
It also smelled a little like magic, but Violet doubted too many others would catch that particular scent. She was good at catching whiffs of things in the air. She was like Gus from Psych, with a “super sniffer.”
She also doubted anyone would recognize what they smelled as magic. She wondered, at first, whether the magic she could taste in the air was a part of the approaching cold, but as she infiltrated the Seattle Underground and made her way beneath the streets of the city, the smell of magic grew stronger.
I’m in the right place then, she thought. The magic had nothing to do with the cold, and everything to do with the portal to the Shadow Realm.
Three months of preparing had brought her to this night. She wasn’t ready to start on this “adventure” just yet, but she needed to see whether or not what she had deciphered was correct. One of the more ancient texts on the Shadow Realm had been the only source she’d located on portals that could take someone to that dark place. The texts had been penned by no other than Wolfram Lovelace, and she wasn’t surprised. It would take someone who’d been that dark and lived that long ago to understand something this hidden.
But he’d written in his own code, and what he’d said on the matter was hard to understand and confusing to translate. Either the portal to the Shadow Realm was here, beneath the streets, in the 19th century first-level town of Seattle, or it was located in a Vietnamese vegan restaurant.
Violet pulled out her cell phone and pretended to thumb a few links on the screen as she surreptitiously looked around from beneath the protection of her hood. She was alone; the street was deserted but for a homeless woman at the far end of Pioneer Square who was having a heated argument with the totem pole.
Violet tucked her phone back into her pocket and descended the damp, moldy steps to the wrought iron gate that separated the aboveground from the underground. It was the same door the “Seattle Underground” tour guide had taken Vi’s tour group through earlier that day, when she’d attended one just to scope it out a bit. The scent of magic had been missing, no doubt because the more humans there were in a location, the more diluted its magic became. The nervous tourist chatter accompanying them earlier was of course gone, and it was almost as if the noise had been replaced by mist. Somethi
ng always came in to occupy the space where things once were.
Violet touched the gate’s lock with her index finger, which tingled uncomfortably at her contact. There was a lot of iron in it. The black metal was enveloped in a warm light before the lock clicked open. The chain slid noisily away. Vi chanced a glance over her shoulder, nervous someone might have heard. But the stairs rose up to the street level behind her, shielding her from anyone who would have seen her from above.
When the gate in front of her automatically began to swing inward, Violet’s head whipped back around. She held her breath as it creaked open until it clanged against the bricks behind it and stopped. The mist around her seemed to coil and build; then it spread its fingers into the corridor before her. Up ahead, shadows pulled long across the pathway, concealing the old concrete and brickwork. But Violet had been there earlier that day and had a vague recollection of how the hall twisted and turned.
She entered and re-worked the lock by hand, fastening it once more. She felt as if she were fighting against the iron in the steel the lock was made of, like forcing something rusted, or trying to run underwater, but she’d been saving up her strength, the ring pulsed protectively on her finger, and as always, she wanted to refrain from using magic in the mortal realm unless it was necessary.
Once the gate was locked safely locked behind her, she turned to face the darkness ahead. At once, she was alone and cut off from civilization in the Seattle Underground. She moved further down the hall, and when she was far enough away from the gate for her light to be detected, she pulled her phone back out and flicked on the flashlight app. Any fae could have used a light spell for something so simple, but again, she was trying not to use her magic just yet, and what was the point of wasting magical strength when you could use technology instead? To her, science was a wonderful kind of magic itself, anyway.
The Shadow King (The Kings Book 7) Page 2
